In this hand our hero does the right thing and makes a steal bet of 3x the big blind. The big blind calls, and through the use of HUD (Heads Up Display) stat keeping, our hero knows that this
villain is a 70/8/2 fish (meaning he plays 70% of all his hands!). The flop comes K56 with two hearts. This is not a bad place to cbet with a King on the board, but the
“draws” (meaning 56 and two hearts) make it less than ideal since someone drawing may call those cbets. However, our hero has one of those draws in the form of 34
and is open ended to a 2 or 7 (that’s hopefully not a heart). The hero checks the flop. This isn’t a bad move and is definitely debatable on whether or not to cbet
(continuation bet), but this move is fine here and I don’t have much problem with it. A King comes on the turn and the villain leads out with a min-bet.
Now for our hero, this card didn’t change a thing because even if the villain had a pair of Kings and just made trips, he’s still drawing to a hand that beats him. Our hero flats
this bet which is one of the two “right” moves here because folding is simply not an option at this point. The 7 comes up and it’s not a heart, so our hero is feeling very
good about his hand because he’s only losing to 48 (very unlikely since we’re holding a 4) and 89 (another high unlikelihood). Chances are our villain has maybe one pair or if
he’s lucky hit a K on that turn and was trying some sort of horrible slow-play. The villain leads out with an absolute value bet (trying to make the right amount of $ compared to the
level of his hand) by betting $4 into a $2 pot. Our hero raises 2.5x which isn’t bad but a shove here is probably the best move. Regardless, our committed villain stacks off with
that dirty K for failed trips against the hero’s straight.
To look at this hand from the villain’s perspective, he called a blind steal – first mistake. Unless you have a great drawing hand (JT suited) flatting this bet is wrong and even
then I like raising against someone that is stealing with a wide range of starting hands. Either put up or shut up and a re-raise is always best against someone that is constantly
over-stealing. The villain’s check on the flop is actually a good move – chances are our “stealing hero” here would continuation bet, in which case the plan is to
check-raise and get him off his hand or any potential draws (straight/flush). The villain’s biggest mistake is the turn min-bet. This was an attempt to bet-raise against our hero
while holding a big hand while not pricing out any of the draws. A bet here of $1.25 is mandatory – both to get value for trips, and also to price out draws who must “beat the pot
odds” (a subject covered later) in order to make their draw. Finally, with the straight HITTING the river our villain fails to think that by calling the turn bet that the hero might
actually have something, and over-bets the pot thinking their trips are invincible. The alarm bells didn’t go off when the hero raised with two Kings on the board and he simply stacked
off against someone that he didn’t have beat.
----------------
Check Sean's blog for updates on his poker journey at: http://www.icemonkey9.com
Read Related Playing Specific Situations Articles:
In this article we'll look at some hands from my hand histories at low stakes, specifically $0.50-$1 No Limit Hold'em (both 6max and Full Ring) and also give HUD stats of the villains and see
how that might affect our thinking in terms of making a decision.
